


Dead men walk in Silence

by Lacertae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Introspection, M/M, Mentions of War, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 04:58:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9368957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacertae/pseuds/Lacertae
Summary: *Reaper76* Nothing is fair in War and Love.Written for the Reaper76 weekDay 3 - “At Your Back” - Trust/Betrayal





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Veraverorum (your_Mother)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/your_Mother/gifts).



> this was written while giving a pep talk to my friend who is participating to the reaper76 week, and I ended up getting inspired myself to write this piece. I hope you will like it!

**Dead men walk in Silence**

 

All is fair in love and war… that is how it goes.

That saying is wrong.

Every decision one takes at war will forever haunt them, years down the lane. The gunpowder smell of a bullet shot at the wrong person, blood running down from a wound that could have been avoided, the look in someone’s eyes as they are left behind to die.

Love is the same.

There is nothing fair in falling in love. It’s dirty and violent, it uncovers raw wounds you’d have much preferred to keep hidden. It leaves you bare and vulnerable for that one person to see –or more, depends how it works for you.

Jack knows this. Love and war are both carved into his soul, and he cannot have one without the other, as he’s known war so intimately one could call it a lover, and he’s known love so strong it ripped through him with the same fierce power of a grenade.

You can commit mistakes at war, and the result can be death, or a guilt you carry with you until you die. There is no escape, for the touch of war leaves a mark that won’t fade.

You can make mistakes with love, and the result is about the same –you are left a shell of who you were, or you grit your teeth and keep going, but the weight of those mistakes will be like a ghost that walks alongside you.

Jack Morrison has made mistakes along the way. He has fought his war, and the war has changed him. He bears the scars on his body, and even deeper scars are hidden away in the folds of his soul, and for each scar is a name of someone he’s failed.

There are a lot of names, and not all of them are dead. The most painful names are those of people who are left alive to deal with his mistakes.

He has loved with the same intensity he has fought, and the scars left behind on his body are vicious and brutal and invisible to the eye –and they all bear the same name.

One name has always been enough for him, and yet it appears it was not enough to prevent him from making mistakes.

There is a ghost walking side by side with him that Jack has never made peace with.

It’s dark, and frightening, and moves with inhuman speed. The ghost has a name, but Jack refuses to mention it, even within the confines of his mind, for fear of calling the devil where the devil can find him.

Things change, and Jack has changed the most, in thirty years. He’s grown good at running so that the ghost has to keep up with him, but lucky him, he needs no feet to chase him down.

Jack has lost his name, shedding it like an old skin as he goes. He picked up a new name along the way, and a new identity, and new weapons, and fights as he runs from his past, and his ghost has changed his name too, and their fights sometimes cross with one another, always on different sides, always alone.

Once there was trust between them, and they were together in all ways that count and in some that did not.

Then mistakes were made, and Jack never owned up to them, and when he tried to, it was too late.

As a reminder, he brings with him a lone photograph, now old and ruined, edges frayed within the protective frame. In the photo there is a young face that does not belong to him anymore. He’s smiling brightly, that young man, a fleeting memory frozen and stolen from a different time, and maybe back then things weren’t happier, but at least he had never felt alone then. Next to him there is another young man, and that one is smiling too. It’s the face of a ghost, and a reminder that you can try to run, but you can never leave your mistakes behind.

Now he’s old, and age has left him weathered, a touch of snow on his hair and extra wrinkles on his face. Jack is a name he doesn’t answer to no more.

The ghost of his one big betrayal is still chasing him down, a soul that is unchanging in its reborn identity, and a new name, and new weapons, and they end up facing one another time after time. No-more-Jack greets that old ghost with grim determination and fights tooth and nail, every single time. His ghost is as dark as death, and bears its same name, hurt and devouring everything in its path, hungry for revenge for a betrayal that left him with no bones and no heart that truly beats, and No-more-Jack can do nothing but repent even as he fights back.

Yet, time is running out.

One day, soon enough, they’ll meet up again, past and present, and there will be nowhere to run anymore. The chase will end. There will be no room for hesitation or takebacks… and then they will be together again.

In the meantime, No-more-Jack keeps running.

There’s little else to do, and he has to fill his time to forget the emptiness inside and the echo of names spelling out his mistakes in his wake.

Nothing is ever fair in love and war, and both come with ghosts that haunt you forever, and sometimes broken trust cannot be forgiven.

You can ask Soldier76 about it if you ever happen to catch him, but there is no answer guaranteed.

Dead men walk in silence.


End file.
